Project 003 Martian Terra

First I created a contour map by AutoCAD. It was difficult to create one that looked like natural, so I went back and forth between AutoCAD and 3d Max and adjusted the contour map several times. What I did to make the coutour map look like natural are

Sudden changes of gradient on a slope make the slope look strange. Make the changes more continuous.

Perfect concentric circles for a mountain look strange. Draw a circle first, then trace that by a polyline in order to get many points, offset the polyline, and lastly move the points of the polylines a little so that they look irregular and natural.

After finishing the contour map, I started making a 3d Max model. It was difficult to make the surface look natural. First I simply applied a jpeg file I got from the Internet to my model, but the boundaries between the repeating texture images were so conspicuous that my model looked like being paved with tiles. Then I went to Photoshop and dupulicated the jpeg image several times, rotated some of them, and merged them. Then the new texture image became more uniform and had the same tones at its four sides. I replaced the former texture with the new one, and the result was much better.